Nightshade

over the cutout where Joan’s image had been, Cynthia knew the image of herself was finally in its rightful place.

“It should have been me anyway,” she murmured as she slipped the altered photo back into its frame. Standing it up, she stepped back, cocked her head, and gazed at her work with a critical eye. From only six feet away, the picture looked totally genuine.

Not only genuine, but right.

Then she moved on to the photographs on the desk, replacing the cutouts of Joan’s face and figure with images of herself from the album until all the photographs on Bill’s desk had been altered.

Bill and Cynthia at their wedding, their son standing next to his mother.

Cynthia and Matt, on the Eiffel Tower, gazing out over Paris. Looking at the picture, Cynthia could almost see the view herself, as clearly as if it she had been there instead of Joan.

Bill, Cynthia, and Matt, riding horses five years ago.

“Perfect,” she whispered as she gazed at the photographs, now put back in the positions Bill had left them. “Now it’s right. Now it’s the way it should have been… ”

* * *

MATT DRIFTED BACK to consciousness, the line between sleep and wakefulness so blurred that he wasn’t sure where one state ended and the other began. Pain was the first thing he became aware of — pain that seemed to have seized every nerve of his body.

His head ached — a dull, throbbing ache that intensified every time his heart beat. Instinctively, he reached up to touch his head, but his shoulder protested, sending a searing tongue of agony down not only his arm, but his body as well. He groaned out loud, then made himself lie still as the spasm slowly eased.

Where was he? The blackness around him was so deep he could feel it closing in on him as if it were something physical. Claustrophobia gripped him then, and he lashed out in panic with his feet, as if to kick at an unseen enemy. But when his feet touched nothing, the claustrophobia lost its grip and his panic subsided.

His nostrils filled with a foul odor — urine and feces, mixed with something else, something he couldn’t quite identify, but that made his skin crawl and his stomach heave. Steeling himself against the revolting stench, he tried moving again, experimenting with his limbs one by one. His legs were sore, but the pain began to ease as he moved them. Satisfied that they weren’t broken, he tested his arms. They felt all right, except for the pain in his shoulders. In fact, his shoulders felt like they had when he slammed into a practice bag too hard a couple of weeks ago. They’d ached for a couple of hours, but nothing was broken. So now he thought that he must have run into something, or fallen.

He reached up to touch his head again, moving slowly this time, working through the pain in his shoulder. He felt something sticky matting his hair, brought his fingers to his mouth and licked them. The salty taste of blood spread across his tongue.

He touched his head again, and felt a swollen, spongy knob. A cut across the top of the knob stung when his fingers encountered the raw nerves exposed by his torn scalp.

Hit by something.

Something hard, and with an edge sharp enough to —

An image flashed into his mind. Aunt Cynthia! He’d been in the den — at his father’s desk — and his nostrils had filled with the scent of his aunt’s perfume. He’d looked up, and —

And seen her!

She’d been there, looming above him, holding a fireplace poker. But that was impossible! His aunt was dead.

Struggling to hold on to the image before it could fade away from his memory like the wispy vestiges of a dream, he suddenly saw it. Not his aunt — his mother! That’s who it had been!

Her face had been covered with makeup, and she’d twisted her hair up the way his aunt’s was in the big picture hanging in the guest room, but behind the makeup, it had been his mother’s face.

Memories of dreams tumbled through his mind, dreams in which his aunt had come to him in the night, and he’d heard her voice whispering to him, telling him she loved him.

Felt her fingers on his flesh.

Felt her slipping into bed beside him, caressing him, touching him.

Not dreams!

It had never been dreams!

A wave of nausea rose inside him as the truth sank in. How many times had it happened? How many times had his mother crept into his bed in the middle of the night?

Three times?

Six?

A dozen?

No! Not that many! It couldn’t have been that many. He struggled to remember, but all the memories seemed twisted together.

He lay still in the darkness, wanting to shut out the terrible memories of what he and his mother had done. Again he told himself it had only been a dream, that his mother couldn’t possibly have done the things he was remembering, but even as his mind struggled to repress it all, his body remembered, and merely the memory of her touch brought back the stirring heat in his groin.

With the excitement came guilt. Was it possible that he’d actually liked it? No! No, he couldn’t have!

But if he hadn’t liked it, why had he let her come back?

A sob caught in his throat, and he wished he could die in the blackness, wished the darkness could swallow him up so he would never have to be exposed to the light again, never again have to be seen by anyone.

A sense that he wasn’t alone suddenly overwhelmed Matt, pulling him from his thoughts. He felt an unseen presence, lurking in the darkness nearby.

Then he heard a soft, muffled groan.

Pulling himself to his hands and knees, ignoring the pain in his shoulders and his head, Matt crawled through the darkness. “Who is it?” he whispered. “Who’s here?”

Again he heard the muffled sound, closer now. He groped in the darkness, and a moment later touched something. It moved, and his hand reflexively jerked away. Once again he heard it. It sounded as if someone were trying to say something. He reached out, and this time when his hand brushed against something, he didn’t pull away.

“It’s all right,” he whispered. “I won’t hurt you.” He reached out with his other hand and felt an arm… an arm in a sleeve.

He moved his hands up the arm until his fingers brushed against bare skin. Hearing a muffled cry, he understood. Whoever he’d touched was gagged.

Quickly, he groped in the darkness until his fingers found a face, and felt the duct tape over the mouth. Carefully, he worked a corner of the tape loose, then slowly began peeling it away. Before he finished, the head jerked back, leaving the tape hanging in his fingers.

“Matt? Is that you?”

It was Kelly!

“What happened?” he asked. “What are you doing here?”

Sobbing, her voice barely audible, Kelly tried to tell him what had happened. “I was coming to see you… I just hated the way everyone was treating you, and — and — ” She broke off, her voice choking as relieved sobs overtook her.

“But what happened?” Matt repeated.

“Your mother,” Kelly said when her sobs subsided enough so she could speak again. “She — I think she killed your grandmother. And she kicked me so hard I think my arm is broken.” Matt reached out to her, but when he started to put his arms around her, she whimpered with pain. “Just hold my hand,” she begged. “Hold my hand and tell me where we are.”

“I don’t know. I was in the den, and she — she — ” He faltered, but made himself finish. “I think she wanted to kill me too,” he whispered hollowly. He told her what had happened.

“There’s someone else here too,” Kelly said when he finished. “She opened the trapdoor again a little while ago and pushed somebody down.”